Ji Xianlin greatest Chinese Indologist dies at 98.

JI Xianlin greatest Chinese Indologist dies at the age of 98.Great eulogies were given .Chinese indologist is almost oxymoron.With lack of Chinese openness and humiliating defeat of Indian forces by china in 1962 have made people of two great civilizations lesser trusting of each other.India had long term close relations with Buddhists in china and Tibet.Many Tibetans feel India and its culture is like there philosophical older brother.

Long term relations have been displaced by suspicion on both sides . Indians feel they are the aggrieved party and feel China wants to humiliate them .Chinese in its communist and anti religious political system in last 50 years have made group of allies into large militaristic empire without room for minority views.

May the new found economic clout will make it more pluralistic and tolerant . As China has insisted and gotten its way all the time it does not think it needs to moderate.

I hope that we encourage Indian scholars to become China experts with clear understanding of its literature and classics of philosophy. Sadly many Chinese languages are not encouraged even in China.

Jaswant Singh former foreign minister of India wrote about this scholar in the Hindu.


I agree with him and would mention two great scholar and philosophers who died recently.
One was a monk of Ramakrishna mission in Rhode Island and Massachusetts Swami Sarvagatananda ji. he was 96 years old who had served in Karachi center at the time of partition. He was in American since 1954 .For a long time he was a recognised scholar of Hinduism as well as of Islam at Harvard university .He was consulted for issues relating to Islam as there was no scholar of higher understanding of Islam was available at that time.

Other scholar of Sanskrit and responsible for existence of dept of Sanskrit & history of mathematics at brown Mr David Pingree. He died a few years ago. I found out quite as bit later to attend any services for him .He was a scholar in the classic sense .He studied all the classical languages Greek,Latin, Arabic,Persian and Sanskrit.His love for Sanskrit was immense . He was instrumental in collecting Sanskrit manuscripts in history of math.Brown has one of the largest collection in the subject matter in the world.

I am glad that we had honored him for his scholarship at the RI statehouse several years ago for his contributions. I was president of the India association of Rhode island at that time.
He had mentioned to me how even at late age (80+)he had gone to Jaipur with a group of students and had catalogued large part of the manuscripts.Some times ,we do not realise that such catalogues are the first step in understating beauty of such scholarship.

Many years ago i had asked him that how he got the manuscripts photocopied as it was not easily available in India.He mentioned he had manuscripts copied by experienced Sanskrit writers by hand and it was cheaper than photo copy.

Other time i remember when VasuVaj a Sanskrit promoter and innovator in learning who taught Sanskrit by usage visited .Professor Pingree welcomed him and Vasu Vaj Ji gave a class to his students which all including professor Pingree and prof Peter Sharf thoroughly enjoyed. Other time i enjoyed a paper by a female scholar who made the point how female scholars were well represented in ancient Indian treaties by documenting it and creating a time line.

These scholars and thinkers leave this earth a better place than they found it.We all are truly
indebted to them.

P.s I just remembered that we had honored Swami ji at portuguese club when Mahesh Patel was president of the India association of Rhode Island.